In this collection, Kathy Stoken explores trees as witnesses to time, memory, and human experience. Twisting branches, exposed roots, and drifting leaves become visual metaphors for endurance, change, and the quiet stories held within the landscape.

Rather than depicting specific species or locations, these trees emerge intuitively during the painting process. They are hybrid forms—part observation, part imagination—shaped by emotion and memory. Each painting reflects a moment where nature seems to speak softly, offering fragments of reflection about growth, loss, resilience, and return.

Working primarily in acrylic, Stoken layers warm and muted tones to evoke the atmosphere of remembered places. The landscapes are less about geography than about the internal terrain of nostalgia and connection.

The Poetic Gossip of Trees invites viewers to pause and listen to the quiet conversations that exist between time, place, and the living world.

Copse: a small gathering of trees

I’ve always been a tree person. What is happening in our environment is unsettling. The trees in my yard have become the inspiration and focus for my work. The resilience of trees is not immutable.

Local Carlisle artist, Lori Madison explores the element of texture as an expressive medium in her minimalistic compositions. Through an abstracted use of texture and color, Madison weaves a sensitive visual display of memories, feelings and thoughts. Often creating art from any utilitarian material at hand, these works primary components consist of paper products and modeling paste.

Michael Lahr tries not to take himself too seriously, however, admits that painting for him is a passion verging on an obsession. A passion fraught with challenges, sometimes void of achievement, and occasionally filled with exhilaration.

A transplant to Carlisle, Michael and his wife Dawn, chose to retire to Central Pennsylvania after a twenty-plus year career as a high school art teacher in Arlington Virginia. No stranger to Pennsylvania, Michael graduated from Chambersburg Area Senior High School and then Shippensburg State College, though neither degree carried any memorable distinction. After two years in the Army, Michael found his teaching legs in the Teacher Corps at the University of Kentucky Graduate School of Education, then part of the VISTA Program (Volunteers in Service to America). It was at this late date that Michael “discovered” art and from here went on to Catholic University in Washington D.C. where he completed an MFA in Painting.

Interior Images takes us inside the rooms and spaces that, when interpreted along with the objects and furnishings found there, serve to make an environment richer and more interesting. Works in oil and mixed media display a whimsical yet masterly crafted sense of form and function.

A comprehensive look at Michael Lahr’s works, dating back to the 80’s, may be found on Instagram @michael.lahr.

A 5th generation potter, Chad Brown resides in Seagrove, North Carolina, where as a young boy he watched his grandfather turn pots in the way that he learned from his great-grandfather. Steeped in tradition, Chad honed the more technical side of his craft in Seagrove as a journeyman potter, traveling from studio to studio production throwing.

For more than 15 years Chad worked out of his grandparent’s farm in a small shed he built while in middle school. Outgrowing his need, in 2013, Chad and his wife Erin purchased land in Moore County, a stone’s throw from his great-great grandfather, one of the original five Seagrove Potters, W.H. Chriscoe’s kiln and shop. Here Chad designed, and with the help of friends, built the wood fired kiln from which today’s pottery is fired. Five generations of handed-down tradition and refined techniques with the engineering of tested, accomplished knowledge, Chad Brown moves his roots forward.

Chad states, “I enjoy making wood fired alkaline glazed and salted pots…I see pots in two ways: shape and surface. The shapes are designed by me and the surfaces are decorated by fire.”

More may be found on Chad Brown and his kiln construction at www.chadbrownpottery.com.